Katrien De Blauwer

Born in Ronse in Belgium
Lives in Antwerp

Katrien de Blauwer has become a master in the art of “cutting”, a term that defines her practice better than “collage”, since the latter fails to express her mastery of composition and the formal impact of her creations. In fact, her artworks are not collages in the usual sense. They are not about associating fragments in order to recreate images like the surrealists did for instance. Her artistic gesture originates from an intuitive perception and a poetical process, but her approach is conceptual and essential in nature. Katrien de Blauwer is a meticulous observer and a careful analyst of the various elements that make up a photograph whether in relation to the subject matter – how it captures a piece of reality through framing- but also to the image space – the various levels and colors it is made of. However she is not directly a photographer. She prefers to pick and extract bits and pieces from others’ photographic language in order to revive their formal value.

DIRTY SCENES

Katrien de Blauwer

2019

978–91–88113–25–2

Page after page they undress. Their legs laying down gracefully on a bed, resting for eternity—so it seems. Others are standing up, can you feel the warmth coming out of their skin? It seems they are dancing together from scene to scene. Inviting you to join them. Their naked bodies find refuge between the paint strokes, next to the cardboards, under the pencil marks. They will not show us their eyes, we won’t know what their faces look like. They are only bodies. Yet, can’t you feel their glance, looking right through you.

WHY I HATE CARS

Katrien de Blauwer

2019

978–91–88113–23–8

Following her previous book When I Was a Boy, Katrien De Blauwer (b. 1969, Belgian) continues to explore her medium of « photography without a camera » in the monograph Why I Hate Cars. After studies in painting and fashion, De Blauwer began delving into a wayward artistic practice by collecting imagery from old magazines and newspapers — as a therapeutic self investigation, of which became the foundation of her work. In creating her own collages, De Blauwer reveals an inner realm as she initiate anonymous and cinematic narrations. In this particular work, she began experimenting with paint and crayons — bearing an additional layer of colors to the stories she tells.

The book contains an excerpt written by Katrien De Blauwer, taken from one of her notebooks.

First edition of 1,000 copies. Special edition of 50 copies, numbered, in paperboard slipcase, screen printed in white, with signed and hand-drawn original print. Choice of 5 prints — 10 copies of each print.

I do not want to disappear silently into the night

Giuliana Prucca (Avarie) and me worked together on this book. The selection of collages explores the connection with Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni.

The book was printed on two kinds of paper. At the end and the beginning of the book there where text fragments on fold out pages. The middle part of the book consisited of blow ups of the back sides of my work.

The book was printed on 750 copies and 50 of them where made into special editions. These copies have an original double page work in analogy with the notebooks in them and are signed, numbered and stamped.